THE RAGER! – Wrestling’s 4th of July and All Things Regarding Wrestlemania XXIX

That magical time of year is upon us and even among all the naysayers and people of indifference, I find myself quite enamored with the excitement of it all. Has this Wrestlemania season been particularly kind to all of us this year? Maybe not but that never seems to stop WWE from putting on a hell of a show. We have full plate of activities on our hands this weekend so let’s break this down.

2013 Hall of Fame Inductees.

Mick Foley being inducted by Terry Funk
Mick is one of those inductees where you wonder why it took so long to be inducted in the first place but this year, he gets the home town advantage. I’m not really going to say that this induction is well deserved (that goes for the rest of the inductees as well) because that would be incredibly redundant. Recognized for his wrestling career but deserves an entire wing to himself just based on all the things he’s done away from the ring.

Bob Backlund being inducted by Maria Menunonunuos
The only thing that seemed out of place about this was who was inducting him. My ignorance was resolved after I read about them meeting when he was a guest on “Singled Out” where she was the producer and have remained close ever since. Another obvious choice for the Hall of Fame as well as someone who probably should’ve been in sooner.

Trish Stratus being inducted by Stephanie McMahon
Arguably the most popular Diva of the early 2000s for a variety of reasons. A lot of people assumed Lita would be inducting her (the only other Diva to challenge her popularity in those days) and seemed to strike a chord with fans when those rumors were shot down. In an awkward twitter conversation during Raw this week, Trish asked Steph to induct her and that solved that.

Bruno Sammartino being inducted by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Definitely the marquee choice for this year, the longest reigning champion was a hard get for WWE. After decades of feuding and disagreeing with Vince McMahon over the content of his programming, it took a changing of the guard to HHH to convince Bruno to finally agree. This shuts up everyone that keeps repeating that having Bruno included will validate the HoF but overlooking that Mike Tyson and Drew Carey in there cancels that idea out. I respect Bruno’s mountains and mountains of contributions to the company, I just think his stance against the company’s product for all these decades is quite ridiculous and resembles the thoughts of a man that took his time in the business way too seriously.

Donald Trump presumably being inducted by vince McMahon
Friend of the company, Trump is the celebrity inductee for the year and I’m also surprised this hasn’t happened sooner. As soon as WWE acknowledge the concept of the “celebrity wing,” Donald should’ve been inducted right away due to his close dealings with the company and actually getting involved in numerous Wrestlemanias. Although I swear I will break something if he mentions anything about a birth certificate.

Booker T presumably being inducted by Stevie Ray
I’m going to break my initial ruling by saying this is well-deserved due to his years of being an absolute work-horse for so many years to the world of professional wrestling. It would be pretty cool to see him on stage with Stevie Ray although some people are speculating that Goldust may also be a choice to induct Booker.

Wrestlemania XXIX

Just because it’s interesting to note that as of right now (3:39 pm EST on April 2nd) the weather forecast for East Rutherford, NJ for April 7th is partly cloudy with the highs in the mid 50s and lows in the mid 40s. It’s not exactly the excruciating nipple-fest temperatures we were predicting but a nipple-fest nevertheless.

Pre-Show Intercontinental Championship Match
Wade Barret(c) vs The Miz
Miz is undefeated at Wrestlemania, not sure how a pre-show match would figured into that but Wade isn’t doing much as champ so you tell me how this is gonna go.

8-Person Mixed Tag Match
The Dancing Bears & The Funkadactyls vs Rhodes Scholars & The Bellas
Not really sure what the premise of this “feud” is seeing as how this was sloppily pasted together at the last minute. I’m a big Sandow fan and I’m glad that he made it onto the show but I had something a lot better in mind.

Say My Name Match
Chris Jericho vs Fandango
Like the previous match, not exactly sure why they’re fighting and it was something that seemed to be put together pretty recently but I’m actually looking forward to this. Firstly, we know Jericho has reached a point in his career where he can hand-pick his opponents and I’m going off that assumption for this match. Secondly and more importantly, Johnny Curtis won me over during his time in NXT Redemption and I find myself having faith in him and this new character. Both of those factors put together on top of what we know Jericho can do and I believe we have a really good match on our hands.

Bar-Holding Protest Match
Bork Bork vs Clone HHH (or III, if you’re keeping score)
For the record, it’s clone HHH because since he got the haircut, he has not held the mic all weird like he usually does nor has excessively used “This business” during a promo. The only explanation is that he’s a clone.

Did you love everything these two pulled off during their feud last summer? No? Well you should probably skip out on this because they’ve literally copied that build almost word for word with the exclusion of all the excessive arm-breaking and including the retire stipulation. Seeing as how that match went on-top of WWE being forever tempted to use HHH for next few years, I see HHH coming out on top.

Tag Team Championship Match
Team Friendship(c) vs Biggler
Another match that seemed to be made in haste but at least we got to see a bunch of Ziggler and Daniel Bryan matches in the buildup, right? One of the major stories here is that we are seeing Big E for the first time in a WWE ring and at Wrestlemania, no less. I really dig Big E but that probably is more because he makes me chuckle on twitter.

Pissing Contest MatchMark Henry vs Ryback
It’s WWE’s new toy versus their old toy. Essentially this is WWE’s obligatory freak show portion of the show that we see every year. Anybody interested in a feud based only off of muscle and who can lift bigger things over their heads probably shouldn’t be reading this. You may find yourself more comfortable looking at pictures on your WWE app or at a Criss Angel show or something along those lines.

Six-Man Tag Team Match
The Shield vs Randy Orton, Sheamus and Big Show
Every time I predict a Shield loss, they pull off an impressive win so it is in that spirit that I say that The Shield will be squashed in a timely fashion. A lot of people are predicting an Orton heel turn, at least that’s what everybody might be hoping for. The only bad thing about that happening would be WWE’s temptation to make Orton associated with Shield and I’m just tired of him in factions and Shield is fine on it’s own.

World Heavyweight Championship Match
Alberto Del Rio(c) vs Jack Swagger
As I stated in Blair’s recap of Smackdown, this feud is like beating a dead horse with a dead horse. This story line has devolved down to crutches war every week and that’s only entertaining for a certain period of time and I feel like we’ve crossed that threshold.
A lot of people are expecting Ziggles to finally cash-in here. I’m not so sure people are predicting this as they’re more hoping this into existence.

Respect Has to be Urn-ed Match
The hot story of today seems to be Paul Bearer’s son expressing his displeasure over Raw’s ending with Punk spilling “ashes” onto Undertaker even though he gave WWE the thumbs-up when it was presented to him. Sure, the final product that we all saw might have been vastly different than what they initially brought to him but I feel like once you give somebody the okay with something like that, it’s their right to do whatever they want with it and you lose the right to complain. It’s the same type of situation when the guy from NPR sold his script and the studio turned it into Dirty Dancing, Havana Nights.
As for the match itself, I don’t need to tell you all here to expect a great match, we’re all expecting it already. The feud took on a life of its own after the death of Paul Bearer and it was used in a way that would make Bill Moody chuckle.

Twice a Lifetime and a Baby
The Rock (c) vs John Cena
Find whatever I said about this match last year and paste it here and add a little bit more sass and annoyance at the fact that this is happening again. I can complain all I want but we’ve all heard it over and over again the past couple months. Just think, it’s all almost over and that’s the best news I can give you.

This week, if you just can’t get enough wrestling, Irrelevant But Awesome Podcasts have a treat for you! We have our HUGE Wrestlemania episode of Classy Ring Attire featuring the very first appearance of our good friend, Nathan. But that’s only the half of it! Nathan and myself started a podcast where I explain America to him and he explains Canada to me and we call it “America’s Hat/Canada’s Shorts.” We have a special wrestling episode with Joel as our guest and will serve as a Part 1 to this week’s Classy Ring Attire. Follow us on twitter @CRAttire for more info as well as live coverage of Wrestlemania and all of our #LazerMania activites throughout the weekend.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do twice,
Chris

The Answer: I did not play an April Fools prank at all this year and that, in turn, is the best prank of all.

About The Author

cwsanders39

Chris is a writer from Fayetteville, NC. His flag-ship column "The Rager" is a weekly therapy in which he lets out all of his aggression about the wrestling world...or really the world in general. Chris also a co-host of the Classy Ring Attire podcast along with Joel Leonard. Follow us on twitter @CRAttire